ABP's investments in Humber

Share:

Associated British Ports (ABP) announced that as much as GBP 50 mln will be spent on doubling the capacity of its two Humber container terminals - Immingham, and Hull.

The UK’s largest port operator has committed nearly GBP 30 mln to upgrading Hull Container Terminal, including the purchase of four new Liebherr Ship-to-Shore cranes (STSes), two of which were delivered in 2016, while the other two are scheduled for delivery in 2018. Immingham Container Terminal, which also took delivery of a new Liebherr crane last year, will be further extended with major investment in new equipment and technology. Across the two ports, capacity will be more than doubled to allow them to handle around 550,000 boxes.

This investment in the Humber comes on the back of the recent investment by ABP in Southampton of a further GBP 50 mln on a vehicle handling terminal which will predominantly be taking care of UK manufactured vehicles for export around the world. Taken together, this means that ABP has invested around GBP 100 mln since the EU referendum result on Brexit was announced. Moreover it's estimated that the trend of growth in Humber will continue.

The Hull and Immingham investments form part of ABP’s commitment to GBP 1.0 bln of investment across all its 21 ports across England, Scotland and Wales over the next five years.

“We have seen significant growth at our Humber container terminals in recent years and all the indications are that this will continue despite Brexit. We anticipate growth in container shipping in the coming years and ABP in the Humber are keen to position ourselves to take advantage of that growth. This is a huge vote of confidence in the economy of the North of England at this crucial time,” Simon Bird, ABP Humber Director, said.

Simon added: “Brexit represents opportunities for port-based, export led manufacturing, particularly if the government was able to introduce free trade zones at ports. This would provide great opportunities for customers to reduce costs for inbound materials and also take advantage of spare capacity in containers, trucks and ships, to re-export.”